Russia bike patrol

The Chelyabinsk police in Russia have recently launched a bike patrol, which is apparently pretty unusual in Russia. According to the captions provided by ITAR-TASS on these photos, this new bike patrol coincided with a record heat wave across Russia last week.

I wish I could see more of the lettering on the bike frame; I just see the first few Cryllic letters M-I-L-I-… I know nothing about the bicycle industry in Russia.

And something you’d never see on an American police bike patrol: no helmets! As far as I can tell, these guys and gal don’t have weapons or even a radio.

Professional cyclist Sergei Valeryevich Ivanov is from Chelyabinsk. He races for Team Katusha.

Chelyabinsk was closed to all foreign access after a nuclear weapons facility was built. This facility was the subject of Gary Powers famous U2 overflight in May 1960.

When Boris Yeltsin opened the city up to non Russia visitors in 1992, Western scientists declared it to be the most polluted spot on the planet because of the atomic weapons work and other heavy industry in the region. Until 1956, radioactive waste was discharged directly into a nearby river, which poisons drinking water for downstream towns to this day. Afterwards, waste was dumped into lakes and, later, artificial reservoirs. When one of these lakes dried up in 1968, the radioactive dust from the now exposed lake bed blew away and irradiated a half million people.